Rochelle Walensky, the new director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said she will begin her new job with a long list of tasks: helping states repair Covid-19 vaccination programs and convincing exhausted Americans to wear masks and take other precautions.
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Dr. Walensky said the agency would try to help people overcome doubts about Covid-19 vaccines and promised to increase public confidence in the CDC.
Dr. Walensky will take over the helm of the CDC on Wednesday, as a highly transmissible mutant or a variant of the new coronavirus that threatens to cause a further rise in infections in the next few weeks.
Meanwhile, the vaccination campaign to stop the pandemic is starting slowly, and polls show that many people in the US are reluctant to get vaccinated.
“This is an emergency,” said Dr. Walensky, as she got the papers for her new job so she could get the right to work immediately after the change of administration. New presidents often wait weeks or months to appoint CDC directors.